THE SHIPPING FORECAST

Featured painting is Breaking Waves by Arthur John Black RIO 1855-1936. Find out more here.

This year marked the 150th anniversary of the Shipping Forecast. The Shipping Forecast is produced by the Met Office and broadcast by Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

When the ship, The Royal Charter, was wrecked by a storm off Anglesey in 1859, 450 people lost their lives. As a direct result ,Vice Admiral Robert Fitzroy introduced a warning service for shipping which remained the Met Office responsibility for some time afterwards. The Service was only discontinued during the World Wars.

This map shows the 31 sea areas covering the waters around the British Isles.

This is a beautiful, famous painting of boats in distress in a violent, tumultuous,stormy sea . This is the final goodbye of a man and a woman in their last struggling moments before they are lost to the waves. Alfred Guillou helped to form the Concarneu Art Colony which attracted many artists interested in marine subjects. Concarneu is inscribed on the upturned boat.